The Ogiek of Kenya are a Southern Nilotic people who speak a dialect of the broader Kalenjin languages. They were commonly known by early explorers and missionaries as the Dorobo, a name given to them by the Maasai, who were the first community the foreigners encountered.
Had the explorers approached from
the west, where the Kipsigis lived, they would have known them as the Ogiek;
the name the community used for themselves. The Kipsigis also recognised them
as the Ogiek and regarded them as related brothers who had migrated earlier
from the north, a narrative preserved in their folklore.
The
Ogiek have long been victims of discrimination, displacement, and alienation
from their lands, even before the arrival of the white man. They were at times
chased or pressured by more numerous and powerful neighbours such as the
Maasai, the Nandi, and the Kipsigis. This article seeks to shed light on the
plight of minorities, with the Ogiek at the centre.
The
origin of the term ‘Dorobo’ (from Iltorobo) is derogatory; the Maasai used it
for peoples who kept no cattle and instead relied on wild game and gathering.
The Maa speakers sometimes used the term for their community members who had
abandoned cattle-keeping in favour of other means of subsistence. Not having
cattle was considered weak and undesirable by many Maasai, and it was commonly
claimed that Maasai families would not give their daughters in marriage to
Ogiek men because they feared the risk of poverty.
The
Mau and Mount Elgon forest areas formed part of the Ogiek’s traditional
territory. There was no centralised political authority; rather, the people
lived in small groups of between fifty and a thousand individuals, each group
bearing its own name. The Kaplelach and the Kipchorng'wonek groups are among
the most studied; scholars such as Roderick Blackburn and Corinne A. Kratz have
spent considerable time documenting their ethnic interactions and language use.
An Ogiek man (then referred to as ‘Dorobo’) drinking water, photographed by A. C. Doggett, in Johnston’s The Uganda Protectorate (1902).
Ogiek-Maasai
interaction was often seasonal rather than continuous. While the Ogiek hunted
and gathered honey in the forests, the Maasai grazed their cattle in the
fields, and the two groups occasionally encountered each other during these
activities. At times, the Ogiek would also join their Maasai age-mates in
raiding. Although the Ogiek coexisted peacefully with Maasai neighbours for
long periods, tensions and violence erupted occasionally, typically over access
to hunting grounds, grazing, or other resources. The Ogiek tended to inhabit
higher forested slopes and relied on honey, wild game, and forest products,
while the Maasai occupied the plains where they grazed cattle. During dry
seasons, Maasai herders sometimes moved closer to the highlands, and these
movements sometimes produced violent confrontations. The Ogiek were rarely
militarily organised in the same way as the Maasai and often stood little
chance in such conflicts.
Another
source of friction was the Maasai morans' hunting. Blackburn reports that one
group of eight morans over a seven-year period killed an estimated 50
elephants, 100 rhinos, and 300 buffalo. Notable conflicts recorded between Maa
speakers and the Ogiek include the Damat-Ogiek clash in the 1890s and the Uasin
Gishu-Ogiek conflict in the 1950s. In peaceful times, the communities exchanged
goods: the Maasai traded livestock meat while the Ogiek supplied honey, hyrax
products, monkey capes, herbal medicines, buffalo skins, pots, shields, and
even hunting poison.
The
Ogiek were perhaps among the most linguistically diverse peoples in the region.
Many spoke the local Ogiek varieties alongside Maa, Kipsigis (and Nandi)
dialects, and later Kiswahili. Groups adopted the language and customs of their
nearest neighbours; for example, the Kaplelach incorporated Maa vocabulary and
customs while the Kipchorng'wonek became fluent in Kipsigis. Despite linguistic
and cultural assimilation, the Ogiek were often treated as inferior by their
neighbours.
Corinne
A. Kratz observes: “Regardless of who arrives in the neighbourhood, it seems
Ogiek are the ones to make the effort needed to communicate even in their own
homes or if they are the majority at a meeting. The life they lead condemns
them in Maasai eyes to contemptible inferiority. Why indeed should a Maasai
stoop to learning the languages of such people?” She further notes that Ogiek
people were quick to facilitate communication, while many Maa and Kipsigis
speakers made little effort to learn the Ogiek language. As a result, Ogiek
individuals often code-switched between languages and adjusted their speech
depending on the conversant.
Interestingly, within the same
community, men and women often favoured different lingua francas. Among the
Kaplelach, men would break into traditional songs in the Maa language, while
women, in their private circles, conversed in the Kipsigis dialect. This
diversification of linguistic preferences further highlights the Ogiek’s strong
bond with their neighbours, as they gained mastery of every language they
encountered, speaking them with the ease of natives. Prof. Corinne Kratz
predicted that the Kipchorng'wonek group would, within a few generations, be
indistinguishable from the Kipsigis, citing their close ties and shared
language as factors driving total assimilation.
With
the advent of colonialism and the imposition of reserves, many Ogiek were
compelled to take up agriculture. This diversification was economically
necessary but introduced land demarcation and private ownership into a
community that had traditionally shared hunting grounds communally. Many Ogiek
sold portions of land or lost access to demarcated areas when other communities
moved quickly to claim titled land. Simultaneously, their dress, modes of livelihood,
and choices about formal education shifted as younger generations attended
schools.
By
the early 2000s, the Ogiek were excluded from politics and often evicted
despite their role as forest stewards. In 2017, the African Court ruled they
had been unjustly dispossessed and ordered restitution. Implementation has been
slow, and renewed evictions show how judicial victories can take years to
translate into real change.
Sir
Charles Eliot, in his book The East Africa Protectorate, doubted whether
the people he labelled ‘Dorobo’ had a single distinct language and asserted
that they spoke corrupt forms of surrounding dialects. He also described a dependent
relationship in which the ‘superior’ tribe such as the Maasai, provided
security while the Dorobo supplied certain crafts such as weapon and costume
manufacture. Eliot’s observations reveal the stereotypes and colonial
perspectives that shaped early European accounts of the Ogiek.
At
the centre of Ogiek identity is a question about who counts as Ogiek. Because
many groups adopted the languages and customs of their neighbours, different
Ogiek groups may look quite distinct from one another. There may be greater
cultural variation between Ogiek groups than between an Ogiek group and the
neighbouring community whose language it adopted.
Kratz
tried to understand what being an Ogiek really meant, especially in the face of
assimilation and in the midst of communities that treated them as inferior. “It
seems being Ogiek is a matter of claiming to be Ogiek and having shared the traditional
way of life in the forest. When I ask how one would know an Okiot from a
different group, the obvious and practical answer is, ‘Ask him.’ The assumption
is that no one would claim to be Ogiek who wasn’t. Judging from what people in
other ethnic groups say about the Ogiek, their assumption seems right.”
The fate of the Ogiek epitomises the plight of many minorities in a changing world. Language shift, cultural change, and assimilation are constant pressures on small communities. Without full political representation and effective land rights, Ogiek culture faces the risk of further erosion. It is estimated that there are at most ten thousand native Ogiek speakers remaining; with ongoing habitat loss and social change, that number is likely to decline further.
References
1. Blackburn, R. (1970).
A preliminary report of research on the Ogiek Tribe of Kenya (Discussion Paper
No. 89). Nairobi: Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi.
2. Kratz, C. A. (1986). Ethnic
interaction, economic diversification, and language use: A report on research
with Kaplelach and Kipchornwonek Okiek. Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika, 7.2. 189–226.
3. Hollis, A. C. (1910).
The Nandi: Their language and folk-lore. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
4. Johnston, H. H.
(1902). The Uganda Protectorate (Vols. 1–2). London: Hutchinson.
5. Eliot, C. (1905). The East Africa
Protectorate. London: Edward Arnold